We’d only just turned off the main road into Padstow when the sat-nav decided the shortest route involved a lane that clearly hadn’t seen a car since last harvest. The hedge scraped both wing mirrors and a rogue bramble whipped through the open window, leaving a thin red line across my forearm. By the time we pulled up outside 5 Longshore, the cottage looked almost apologetic, half-hidden behind a low stone wall and a drift of October leaves.

The key was exactly where the owner had promised, tucked under a terracotta pot that still held a few brave geraniums. Inside, the heating had been left on low, so the kitchen already smelled faintly of woodsmoke and yesterday’s toast. We dumped bags, flicked on the kettle, and wandered straight through to the sitting-room window. Beyond the low dunes the sea was the colour of wet slate, flecked with white where the wind caught the tops of the waves. Mid-October light is different here; it arrives late and leaves early, turning everything slightly golden for about twenty minutes before the sky deepens to navy.

We decided a quick stroll along the beach would shake off the journey. The tide was out far enough to let us walk on damp sand without getting our feet soaked, and the air carried that clean, metallic scent of seaweed and salt that only seems to appear once the summer crowds have gone. A few dog-walkers nodded hello; their Labradors charged into the shallows, then shook themselves so vigorously that one of them soaked my already bramble-scratched arm. Typical.

Back at the cottage the little wood-burner was crackling nicely. We pulled the curtains against the early dark and sat with bowls of soup, listening to the occasional rattle of the sash windows when a stronger gust came off the water. It struck me, while watching the flames, how much the season had already changed the pace of things. In July this same stretch of coast would have been all ice-creams and queues for Rick’s; now the beach felt almost private, the cottage cosy rather than merely convenient. The bramble scratch still stung, but it seemed a fair price for having the place more or less to ourselves.